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planning the attack. On Friday, she struck.
    Halfway to the garage exit, Leslie remembered she still had a ski face mask hat on. She pulled the mask off her head and tossed it on the floor under the front passenger seat. Her destination was one of Rick’s father’s properties, which was not rented at the moment and whose features included a nice cozy basement. Last night, Rick again proved to be a great friend and gave her the keys to the house for a few days. Leslie promised him not to break anything inside it.
    #
    #
    Kathy woke up forty minutes after Leslie had duct-taped her to a metal chair she had found in the basement. By then, Leslie was beginning to worry if she had given Kathy too much chloroform: she had made a stop on the drive to Rick’s dad’s house to let the woman inhale some more of that substance, just in case. 
    “Hello there,” Leslie said with a devious smile. “Surprised to see me?”
    The disoriented look on Kathy’s face amused her. A dim basement in Long Beach must have been the last place on earth she had expected to find herself in after work tonight.
    “What’s going on?” Kathy asked.
    “Let’s skip the charade and get to the truth, okay?”
    “Where are we?” Now fear started creeping into Kathy’s green eyes. Great!
    “I have a lot of information on you, Kathy.” Leslie stood in front of Kathy, gripping the Glock with her right hand. “I found out that you had studied chemistry at University of Michigan. That you had worked at some chemical lab in Los Angeles up until three months ago. And I bet you know your way around poisons.”
    “I don’t understand what you are talking about.”
    “Isn’t it weird: a chemist takes a temp job in our accounting department? Why did you do it? What is your game, Kathy? What the fuck is your game?”
     “I was laid off. A few of us were. I needed a job.” Terror had made ever wrinkle on her face all the more pronounced.
    Leslie thrust the gun barrel in Kathy’s stomach.
     “You see this?” she pointed at the large plastic sheet spread on the floor under Kathy’s chair. “This is for your blood, to keep the basement clean. If you don’t talk, I’m going to use this.” Leslie brandished the pistol in front of Kathy’s pale face. For some reason, she was not ready to say the word “shoot.” She thought it would make her sound too lowlife.
    “You don’t have to kill me, Leslie,” said Kathy in a trembling voice. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
    “Good.” Leslie eased into a slightly shabby wooden chair she had picked for herself and crossed her legs. Her intuition told her that was going to be a long night.
    #
    #
    Leslie’s gaze fell upon the napkin, which might still have retained some chloroform. She could not take her eyes off of it for what seemed like several minutes. She was having a short time-out after explaining to Kathy that Helen had ratted her out and demanding answers to the following two questions: who had hired Kathy to poison her and why.
    Leslie suddenly realized something important. She had had a breakthrough, yes siree!
    Was it possible that the substance placed in her coffee had been supposed not to kill or cripple her, but simply knock her out, just the way the chloroform had disabled Kathy hours ago? Someone wanted to immobilize her, drag her to a dark smelly dungeon, and do bad, evil things to her.
    What kind of things?
       Things like an interrogation? That was what she was doing to Kathy right now, right? If you were making a list of possibilities, you could definitely put this one on the top. Somebody, maybe even Kathy, wanted to ask her a few questions.
    Questions about what? And what was that person, or persons, going to do after she answered those questions? Kill her?
    Damn, so much food for thought! She might have inched closer to uncovering these people’s motives.
    “Did you know that Helen died yesterday?” Leslie asked dreamily. The gun lay in her lap.
    “No, I